15 MIN

AZIKIWEE ANDERSON BY TRACY WHITE PORTRAIT BY ERICK GARCIA

I spent a lot of time away from home when I was young. I wanted to be at the Santa Rosa skatepark. I wanted to go faster around the bowls, higher out of them. There was a promise of escape and accomplishment at the skatepark, of invention, ambition, risk. I was there most days, mostly all day when I could.

Azikiwee Anderson showed up at the park one day. I was thirteen. He was tall, muscular, gymnastic, older. He knew things I didn’t, about how the body moves, twists, and falls. He showed me a front flip, I showed him a frontside. He was a vegetarian then—I didn’t know what that meant. He made Indian and Thai food. I didn’t know what Thailand was. He fed me sushi, Thai iced teas, giant burritos that weren’t from Taco Bell. He showed me what it means to command and issue respect, and how to stand up for yourself when you’re disrespected.

Before long, I started spending more and more time away from my second home, traveling around the world. My first trip away was with Azikiwee. He took me up to Seattle and Vancouver, then down to San Diego, for ASA competitions. I was exposed to a whole world of pro-level skating and saw clearly what I wanted to achieve. He looked after me, and I watched him. We continued in this way as we turned pro, invented and refined tricks, competed at the highest levels, started or promoted companies, and traveled the world several times over.

In some ways not much has changed. I still don’t know what to call him: best friend, mentor, big brother. He’s still cooking (better than ever) and now showing his own kids how to be as wonderful as he is. He still smiles, laughs, loves, and eats bigger than anyone I have ever met. He’s still showing me how to take big bites.

– Nick Riggle

Tell us about how and when you got skates on your feet? Well, I started skating around 13 years old, while living in Chico, California. The cool thing to do was to go to our local skating rink called Cal Skate. My brother (Akil), my sister (Shani) and I used to go on Friday and Saturday nights, and we would skate on quad skates.

That was our weekly thing to do for for a couple years, and I got pretty good. Then through that I started to race, and eventually joined the speed skating team for a short period. After spending time building endurance and strength to race, rollerblades exploded onto the scene and my interest shifted. I was mesmerized by them! You couldn’t really ride quads everywhere like you could blades.

I had a good friend at that time whose name was Joel Passavoy*, and he and his father happened to have had the first pair of Rollerblade Lightnings I’d ever seen. I wore the same size skates as Joel’s father, and he was nice enough to let me use them. Joel and his dad purchased the skates for off season cross training in preparation for the upcoming winter in Tahoe. Joel was on the ski team and his father was a ski patrol, so they wanted to stay in shape for the season. Which consisted mostly of Joel and I mobbing around Chico State’s campus jumping and riding stairs.

After falling in love with rollerblades I wanted my own pair, so I begged my mom, who was a single mother, to buy my first pair. I told her it could be all rolled into one birthday/ Christmas/chores money present, because I knew how expensive they were. I wanted them so bad I felt like I would sell my soul… Ha Ha.

*R.I.P Michael Passovoy you're missed and always in our thoughts*

How about about your first “sponsor me tape”? Who did you send it to, and did it create any partnerships or sponsors? I made my first “sponsor me tape” because AJ Jackson told me I was good enough to be sponsored and should make one. At that point I barely knew you should or could get sponsored. He, TJ Weber, and a few others came through Santa Rosa to film a video and called Get In Iine skate shop (my local skate shop) to see if there were any good skaters to show them around. I got the call and took them to different local spots to film.

At the end of the night, AJ told me he thought I was good enough to be sponsored and I should make a “sponsor me tape” to send around. I made ten tapes and sent them off to Senate, Rollerblade, K2, Kryptonics, Harbinger Pads and others. My first official sponsorship was K2. I wasn’t Pro, or even Amateur for that matter, I was a glorified grown-up grom on flow, but it was my start. Getting hooked up here and there with small packages of goodies.

Can you speak on your music background and how it tied into your skating? My father was the drummer for The Neville Brothers Band, I sang in the San Francisco boys choir when I was young, I taught myself how to play the saxophone, I love percussion, and have been beat boxing since the '80s.

I’ve always been deeply into hip-hop, reggae and roots. I feel like it influenced my skating to a large degree and has been woven throughout the tapestry of my artistic self expression in every aspect of my life. From the songs I chose to represent me, to the way we made video sections both visual and harmonic.

What are all the soft/hard goods brands have you created and which one was your personal favorite? I’ve always had a vivid imagination and a ability to sketch out my ideas. I was going to school for art when I decided to focus on becoming a full time skater. I feel like the attribute I brought to the table that served me best was the ability to dream bigger than what we had in hand. Rather than talking about what I did myself, I would like to focus on the projects that I was a part of, weather it was me who spearheaded it, or a collaboration of many of us.

The reason that inline became my life was because I loved the family aspect of it. With that said, here is a list of things I’m proud of:

7 Suns Skate Park; Runners Project Backpacks; 7XL Frames and Hardware; Able Frames and Hardware; Empire Distribution; Production Manager (soft goods); Rollerblade (Designer); IMYTA (M.C.); ASA (Judge); Gravity Games (Judge); X-Games (Judge/Sport Reporter); Dstructure SF; Asian X-Games (Commentary); Eisenbergs (Head of Camp); skatepark consultant (construction/design); Eisenbergs and Zero Gravity.

Tell us about Able Frames, start and finish? Able frames started as a response of me leaving 7XL!

I had all the designs, but the prototypes that kept coming back from China had more things wrong than right, and our first several runs of grind plates didn’t hold up due to the kinds of plastics used in production, even though I had made explicit instructions. So I wasn’t happy.

“I FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT AND I LOST, BUT AT LEAST I MADE A MARK WITH DESIGN!”

When I made the decision to split company with our businessmen associated with the brands we had started, they were not happy with this, so they decided they wouldn’t allow me to keep the name I had created, so I developed a new name, Able, and turned it into a American made brand.

I designed them to be the strongest frames ever made in the market, and had prototypes machined to show and gain interest while traveling on tour. Shortly thereafter, we had CAD drawings and 3D printed prototypes to show and book orders. I was trying to presell products and raise money for tooling of the molds which were very expensive. That’s when I sold off part of the company to raise the money to take it to the next stage. Here is where I will stop.

When did you decide to create Empire Distribution, and who were the primary heads involved? To be honest I have hit my head a few too many times, so you will have to forgive me for I can’t recall the when and where and how much of some of this. I was really just an artist/designer that turned into a “impromptu businessman” with drive and a “can do anything attitude” that wanted to change the world.

Without the following people, the behindthe-scenes business of Able, Empire and D-structure wouldn’t have been what they were: Mike Opalek, Tory Treseder, Kennan Scott, Andra Maldovan, Dan LaRoche, Tamsen Plume, Matt Andrews, Darrin Treinen, Scott LaRockwell, Dave Bolt and Devon Chulick.

How did IMYTA come to be? I owned a skatepark in Santa Rosa and lived with Fabiola who was dating Jon Julio at the time, so we all hung out a lot and skated a lot. We played the game of S.K.A.T.E, where you had to match the other person’s trick or get a letter, like the basketball game P.I.G. Right around then, X-Games was coming to SF, and a lot of the best street skating spots in NorCal were just a stone’s throw away from the event venue. But most of the NorCal skaters couldn’t compete in the X-Games because they didn’t really skate park at all. They were true/real street skaters, and could kill a video section or

a street skate session, but they would never be in this televised event.

If memory serves me right, we talked about throwing a completely underground event, like a street race where you wouldn’t even know where the spots were going to be until you showed up, and we would give you the plan so no one could stop us in advance. The idea was simple, and it was the right time for an event that was for us, by us, and celebrated us to our core. It was fun and exciting for all the right reasons. It was so amazing, how easy and naturally organic it became all at once. identity work. It was amazing!… until the industry started to slip in profitability. Then being in the meetings, and behind the scenes on who was going to be let go because we needed to cut cost, kinda broke my idealistic mind. Back then, when I could see total world sales numbers, and then hear them talk about cutting the pro skaters that I felt had a huge part of securing those sales, it made me furious. Looking back on it, I was a impetuous child bent on speaking my mind, and standing up for us as a whole, and I cost myself a really cool job. I fought the good fight and I lost, but at least I made a mark with design!

What are some of your IMYTA highlights and best memories you hold onto from all of those comps? Now that I think back on it, the IMYTA was some of the best parts of my entire skating life! It was the ultimate cross section of love of our sport, unbridled excitement, rewarded hard work, beautiful play, graceful innovation, and pure-from-the-heart adoration of our sport! I can’t even put into words what it meant to be a part of it, or to get to be the voice associated with it! I am humbled and beyond grateful to have shared it with Jon Julio.

P.S…. as the IMYTA grew, we would have never survived and thrived without the behind the scenes help of many important friends, but most importantly Mike Wilson, and the sponsor that believed in the vision.

Tell us about your time working with Rollerblade? Let’s start off by saying I learned a lot! Cory Miller is my main man, and he helped me become way more than I knew I could be with his friendship and belief. At the time I was working with Rollerblade, it was owed by an Italian company based in Montebelluna, which is a town approximately 50 kilometers northwest of Venice, Italy. So the travel to and from for work was amazing.

I learned how to meet deadlines, and how to work within corporate confines, how to cover your ass, and to cross your T’s and dot your I’s. I started off solving problems and innovating, just trying to be a helping member of an amazing Rollerblade worldwide team. Then I was moved into full on design and brand Need to know your top 3 places visited through skating and the best road trip story? Top 3 places visited are: Japan; Stockholm, Sweden; Australia.

Best Road trip story is: While on the “All or Nothing Tour” in Japan, exhausted and without a place to stay, our entire crew took over a large portion of a train station platform, laying all of our bags down in the middle and then sleeping around them. Vinny Minton put up his camera to record us as we all slept. You could see the passersby looking at us, laughing, not knowing what to do. Everyone was so polite, they didn’t want to tell us we couldn’t be there, or that we would have to leave, so instead they politely walked around us and let us sleep. When we awoke, we all talked about how if we were in NYC, all of our stuff would’ve been stolen. Especially the cameras we left up to film. This was yet another thing that made Japan so amazing, and one of the best rollerblading tours of my life.

You were a big personality that commanded RESPECT on the mic/ megaphone or judges stand. Was it because of the long dreads, big voice or tall stature, or was it the martial arts ass kicking ability? I have no idea really. To be honest, I have never really given it much thought. I feel lucky to have been given the respect I was for the time I was in the industry, and allowed to show how much I cared about our sport.

You are a dad now, what lessons have you learned from your skating career that you

[Clockwise from Top] Tom Fry and Azikiwee in Austraila, photo by Jess Dyrenforth (1998); Rollerblade Ad (2001); Able Frames Company Profile, photo by Keith Wilson (2003); Alley-oop Miszou in Melbourne, photo by Jess Dyrenforth (1998).

will pass on to your boys? I’ve learned If you’re not willing to fall, you will never be great! Pain let’s you know you are alive, you shouldn’t fear it. Be kind to everyone, no matter who you think you are. All the little things matter. You can only control what you do, not what others think. And if you gave it your all, that’s all you can ask.

So what’s going on right now with Azikiwee, and any shout outs? After a few years of being a stay at home dad, and some serious soul searching, I decided that I have always been a foodie, and that I totally loved food and cooking. So I did a bunch of research on culinary schools and decided to attend San Francisco Cooking School. Then I started working in kitchens and doing some private chef events for 8-20 people. It’s been great.

are! To my Mother, Mary Jill Anderson. I would be nothing without you and all the hard work you put into me. You made me feel loved and cared for, no matter what. To my Beautiful Love, my wife, Tamsen, and mother of my wonderful sons, Xavier and Logan. Jason Hines and Chris Fowler, for making sure I could travel the world, learning how to be more than just a skater in my sport. Nick Riggle, Danny Larouch, Tory Treseder, Mike Opalek, Jon Julio, Cory Miller. Shout out to all the wonderful skaters and friends who have housed my Big ’ol self across the planet! Shout out to Chris Mitchell and Angie Walton for giving me my start in print, and Dave Paine for putting me on the map in video! Jess D. and Lawrence Ingram and Scott Walker, for dealing with me when all I wanted to do was be a part. And last but not least, Gil, at RW, for teaching me the hard knocks of business, even though I didn’t like it much at times. And to those who have fed me when I was broke and hungry, or helped me when I couldn’t speak the language. Thanks for thinking of me and including me!